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Mod challenge: find me ten good PB threads from ten permabanned players

KFCeytron·8/27/2019, 7:19:14 AM·6 votes·6,245 views

A permaban for a toxic player indicates that Riot no longer believes that player capable of reform. Punishments didn't prompt self-reflection, warnings of losing the account were ignored, all the toxic behavior was rationalized with a variety of terrible arguments. Did more than four punishments do the trick for some people? Yes, but this was very infrequent, and not worth the damage caused by all the consistently toxic players who didn't learn and were allowed to keep playing. Riot doesn't believe a permabanned player will improve, and they're not interested in letting them try. Riot wants those players to leave.

These people who are unable to follow rules and behave themselves then go onto the Boards and start insisting that their ban was unjust, and any other player's permaban was unjust, and the number of reports matters, and someone else started it, and so on. When someone disagrees with them, they start to demonstrate why they got a permaban in the first place: poor behavior. They pollute the place with bad ideas, bad advice, and uncivil discourse. Sometimes permabanned players post on each other's threads to show support for misbehavior, like a bunch of convicts banging their tin cups against the bars. What's the point of discussing their ban, anyway? It's permanent, and Riot wants those people to quit the game.

Even now there is a highly-upvoted thread on the front page about how permabans for toxic chat are bad because permabanned players just make new accounts anyway, and how a clever and novel solution would be... stacking chat restrictions. This was posted, of course, by a player who was permabanned for toxic chat and isn't happy about being punished. They have no problem with breaking the rules and annoying people; they just don't like it when something bad happens to them. Note that most permabanned players don't keep playing, and Riot tried stacking chat restrictions but it didn't work and just produced more toxic behavior that was more difficult to detect. The thread is selfish and poorly-researched. And yet, it has tons of upvotes, currently at 71-24, with a poll at 179-59. But you look at the comments and see half a dozen players - all relentlessly toxic and permabanned - insisting that this is a good idea and they shouldn't have been permabanned and it was a setup and it was all the other guy's fault and so on and so on with all the same trash they always spew because they're basically sociopaths. Harsh, but I'm not mincing words here. And most of them say they have a giant pile of smurf accounts. Now let's do some math: a few toxic players multiplied by a giant pile of smurf accounts each... what do you know! That's how many upvotes this thread has. It's an obvious example of vote manipulation, bringing a demonstrably useless thread (the idea has been tried and proven ineffective, remember) to the forefront.

This brings us to my challenge to mods. Genesis 18-19 is the well-known story about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham convinced God to spare these sinful cities if they contained a mere ten righteous people. Unfortunately, there weren't any, and the cities were destroyed.

If you can find me ten separate Player Behavior threads by ten separate permabanned players where the player asked about their ban, behaved themselves, learned, thanked respondents for teaching them the error of their ways, improved their behavior, reformed, and became an upstanding player/member of the community (flying in the face of Riot's real-world data, mind you), then I will at least be willing to entertain the idea that perhaps those extraordinary cases are worth the absolutely massive amount of chaff. We're paying a cost, so there should be some benefit. But if you can't, then I urge you to stop allowing permabanned toxic assholes to trash that Board, and just instantly delete any thread or comment in PB posted by a permabanned player. Don't permaban them from Boards entirely; just remove anything they post in PB.

Note that I'm not just talking about threads that weren't quite bad enough for mods to lock/delete, because that almost never happens even when it obviously should. I'm talking about threads that are actually good and useful from permabanned players.

If nothing else, the time period covered by ten such posts should show us how often we see such a chimera around here, and perhaps make a case for much stricter moderation on low-quality content from players who are already known to specialize in such.

Ten separate threads, ten separate permabanned players, ten separate success stories.

34 Comments

ModThe Djinn8/27/2019, 12:54:28 PM4 votes
  1. A player who got a permanent ban while on a 14-day ban posts a reasonable thread inquiring about it.
  2. A player with 31 banned accounts legitimately seeks help with how to manage his mental state in games.
  3. A player puzzled about a permanent ban takes feedback gracefully
  4. A player with 5+ banned accounts finally reaches Honor 3 and feels great about it.
  5. A player makes a heartfelt apology to the community and seems to have learned a lesson.
  6. A player apologizes and uses himself/herself as a warning to others that the cost of losing your account/progress isn't worth the price.
  7. A player realizes their ban was justified and their multiple tickets to Riot were the result of anger and obsession, and makes a public apology.
  8. A player with multiple accounts banned and a punishment on the current one manages to get back to Honor 1, and feels great about it.
  9. A player acknowledges their own problems and looks for a space to put their thoughts to text and get some helpful feedback.
  10. [Removed] Apologies -- this last one didn't meet your specific criteria for a perma-banned player showing reform upon my second check, but I can't be bothered to use the awkward tools at my disposal (see below) to keep looking, because I feel at this point I've proven it sufficiently.

The only reason this was remotely tricky is that there isn't a way to check from the thread title if a player is banned or not (and some players don't mention if they were ever banned), and the TOP post option is no longer on Player Behavior. If it weren't for those two factors this would have taken less than the 10 minutes or so it actually took.

Cind3rkick8/27/2019, 8:15:41 AM3 votes

Or... They couldn't do that because it's pointless looking for 10 specific posts just for the sake of one person ...

Umbral Regent8/27/2019, 8:49:46 AM3 votes

If you can find me ten separate Player Behavior threads by ten separate permabanned players where the player asked about their ban, behaved themselves, learned, thanked respondents for teaching them the error of their ways, improved their behavior, reformed, and became an upstanding player/member of the community (flying in the face of Riot's real-world data, mind you), then I will at least be willing to entertain the idea that perhaps those extraordinary cases are worth the absolutely massive amount of chaff.

Fundamentally, I see no legitimate point to this challenge. Players who straighten out after a permanent ban are few and far between, and, yes, more often than not, permabanned players tend to remain belligerent and harmful to the community even after having their punishment explained to them, but everyone has the right to post on PB to ask about their punishment, whether they come to accept it or Riot's rules or not.

But if you can't, then I urge you to stop allowing permabanned toxic assholes to trash that Board, and just instantly delete any thread or comment in PB posted by a permabanned player. Don't permaban them from Boards entirely; just remove anything they post in PB.

And what'll happen then? I'll tell you - those belligerent players will see that the Moderation team is going out of their way to remove posts with any mention of the fact that they were permanently banned, even going so far as to effectively blacklist specific players from PB on that basis, and they're going to make a fuss and cry out in outrage about "Riot's Big Brother-esque censorship".

It's a lose/lose situation, and I think everyone would prefer the lesser of two evils - letting them post on PB and simply correcting them when they present false/inaccurate information is by far and away better than giving them a litany of other reasons to rant and rave across the boards.

And, even in the case that your suggestion was something that could be humored, I can easily see a catch.

If nothing else, the time period covered by ten such posts should show us how often we see such a chimera around here...

No matter the outcome, it looks like your challenge is set up so that you can twist it to make whatever point you want. First it could be "reformed permabanned players are too few", but then failing that, it could just as easily become "reformed permabanned players are too rare an occasion/too far between".

The condition should be singular and explicit. Ten people? Fine. But you gotta look only at the cases, not how spread out they are over time.

And, at the end of the day, this all comes back to one viewpoint distilled into a question;

What's the point of discussing their ban, anyway? It's permanent, and Riot wants those people to quit the game.

And here's the answer;

  1. Explaining to the player what behavior led to their permanent suspension.
  2. Explaining to the player how the system (in the broad strokes) works.
  3. Explaining the players options following a permanent suspension.
  4. Being able to direct the player to the proper channels in the event that their punishment appears to be in error.
  5. Building up a better understanding of the system.
  6. Creating an opportunity to advise the player should they consider reform.

Riot may want those players to leave League of Legends, but ultimately, due to the nature of League as a Free-to-Play game, they can't effectively prevent them from coming back. And if they do come back, don't you think it'd be better if they reform, or at the very least, aren't breaking the rules anymore?

There's plenty of reason to discuss people's permanent bans. Riot's policy against overturning them and their want for those players to leave League do not diminish those reasons.

GatekeeperTDS8/27/2019, 11:16:01 AM2 votes

You had me up until the religious part. You can do better than that.

Nor do I think removing conversations is a good idea, even if they're shitty conversations. Worth is a subjective thing.

ModUlanopo8/27/2019, 9:44:40 PM1 votes

I'm just going to assume you've never heard of the Starfish story:

One day, an old man was walking along a beach that was littered with thousands of starfish that had been washed ashore by the high tide. As he walked he came upon a young boy who was eagerly throwing the starfish back into the ocean, one by one.

Puzzled, the man looked at the boy and asked what he was doing. Without looking up from his task, the boy simply replied, “I’m saving these starfish, Sir”.

The old man chuckled aloud, “Son, there are thousands of starfish and only one of you. What difference can you make?”

The boy picked up a starfish, gently tossed it into the water and turning to the man, said, “I made a difference to that one!”